Ron Kaplan's Baseball Bookshelf
If it fits on a bookshelf, it fits here.
From the category archives:
The things one finds wandering down the rabbit hole. I was doing some research and just happened to come across the new film, Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts. It’s a fascinating look at an under-reported part of the game. The first thing I thought of was the scene in Moneyball in which Billy […]
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♦ The Baseball Hall of Fame will hold a screening of Fielding Dreams: A Celebration of Baseball Scouts on Thursday, Jan. 18. “[T]his new documentary goes beyond moneyball [sic] and features dozens of interviews with some of the scouting legends of the game, including 5 scouts who helped build the 2023 World Series Champion Texas […]
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♦ Interesting piece on “20 facts you might not know about ‘Moneyball’” from Yardbarker.com. But, sorry, leading off with “The movie is based on a book?” Maybe I’m being overcritical, but come on, this is something you might not know? ♦ Another Yardbarker piece includes Cliff Murdoch Rookie of the Year), Teddy Cullinane (Bull Durham), […]
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My, how times have changed. When A League of Their Own came out in 1992, it did so without much reference to “coming out.” While the vastly popular film did bring much deserved yet overlooked attention to the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, one of the contemporary complaints is that it did not address the […]
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♦ It’s been a very long time since I wrote about the Baseball Project, “a supergroup that includes several former members of R.E.M. and makes music exclusively about the sport,” according to this new article from The New Yorker. ♦ Hot on the heels of the new Netflx documentary The Saint of Second Chances this […]
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A League of Their Own premiered more than 30 years ago. Ahead of my Bookshelf Conversation with Erin Carlson, author of No Crying in Baseball: The Inside Story of A League of Their Own — Big Stars, Dugout Drama, and a Home Run for Hollywood, I found several stories about the film that takes a […]
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A reminder: The Amazon rankings are updated every hour, so these lists might not be 100 percent accurate by the time you read them (or even by the time I finish posting them). But close enough for government work, as the saying goes.az (See my piece on “Why Amazon’s search engine sucks.”) In addition, occasionally […]
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A couple of movies on the horizon that until today I had not been aware of. Both are apparently based on true stories. The Saint of Second Chances is a Netflix production premiering on September 19 that goes over the career of Mike Veeck, son of Bill and a second generation “hustler.” But of course, […]
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From The Seattle Times — based in the city which will host the 2023 midsummer classic– this list of “Great baseball movies and books in honor of MLB All-Star Week” featuring the usual suspects, at lest when it comes to films, with the possible exception of Sugar and Damn Yankees (kids, ask your grandparents. I […]
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Those are the “traditional names” for the 20th and 35th anniversaries. As mentioned in the BBS post from Friday, we are celebrating two “milestones” in baseball pop culture. Moneyball gets china for marking the 20th since its publication. Doesn’t it seem like we’ve been hearing about that for a lot longer? Friday’s entry refers to […]
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From Forbes: “Vintage Baseball Volumes To Bring High Prices At Rare Books Fair.” From Valley News, which covers the Vermont/New Hampshire area: “Baseball odyssey: Book recounts summer of epic road trip.” From the Culpeper, VA Star Exponent: “Pete Hill: Black Baseball’s First Superstar features Culpeper Hall of Fame slugger In Publisher’s Weekly, author David Kelly […]
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Was listening to Extra Hot Great, one of my favorite podcasts ever, and heard a mention of this under “Winners of the Week”: “Lou Gehrig Series From Lorne Michaels in the Works at Apple” From the Hollywood Reporter article: “The iPhone maker/streamer is teaming with Universal Television and Lorne Michaels’ Broadway Video to adapt author […]
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January 3? Already? Where did the year go? From RoyalsReview.com, this list of “15 books for baseball fans—and some for other sports fans, too.” (Note: not necessarily new releases.) Peter Dreier, co-author of Baseball Rebels: The Players, People, and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America and Major League Rebels: Baseball […]
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And maybe it should have stayed buried. In looking up For Love of the Game on IMDB, I found yet another baseball film in which Kevin Costner appeared of which I was totally unaware: Chasing Dreams, a 1989 release that garnered just a 3.2 rating on that site. After viewing the trailer, I understood why […]
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It might be a perfect storm: Ron Shelton, former minor league hopeful and writer/director for perhaps one of the greatest baseball movies of all time in Bull Durham; Ted Williams, perhaps the greatest hitter of all time; and Richard Ben Cramer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and author of What Do You Think of Ted Williams […]
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is available on Amazon.com,
In my most recent "day job," I was the sports and features editor for a weekly New Jersey newspaper, where I hosted another blog. Busy, busy, busy.
I did a profile piece on the award-winning cartoonist Arnold Roth and he was nice enough to "immortalize" me.
My article on the later biographies of Babe Ruth appears in
My article on the Mets’ 1969 postseason appears in
Profiles of several Jewish baseball figures appear in
